Europa and Enceladus are two ocean moons that scientists have concluded have liquid water oceans under their external icy shells. The Europa Clipper mission should reach Europa around April 2030. If it collects data alluding to the potential habitability of the moon, the Landder robotic missions could be the only way to confirm whether there is really life in there or not.
To carry out these Lander missions, the NASA propulsion laboratory team worked on a robot that could manage the search for life and have already tested it on the Matanuska glacier in Alaska. “At this stage, it is a fairly mature concept,” explains Kevin Hand, a planetary scientist of JPL who directed this effort.
In the unknown
There are only a few things that we know with certainty conditions on the surface of Europa, and almost all do not increase well for the Lander missions. First, Europa is exposed to a very severe influence, which is a problem for electronics. The visibility window – When a potential robotic robotic could contact the earth – launches less than half of the 85 hours it takes for the moon to end its day cycle due to the Europa -Jupiter orbit. Thus, for more than half of the mission, the robot should fend for itself, without human soil teams to remove them from trouble. The landing will also have to operate on non -recording batteries, as the long distance from the sun would make solar panels prohibitive.
And this is only the beginning. Unlike Mars, we do not have permanent orbiters around Europa which could provide a communication infrastructure, and we do not have high resolution images of the surface, which would make landing particularly delicate. “We do not know what the surface of Europa looks like on the scale of centimeters to meter. Even with Europa Clipper imaging, the highest resolution will be about half a meter per pixel in a few selected regions,” explains Hand.
